


Who You'd Rather Be With

by JasmineBaggins



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasmineBaggins/pseuds/JasmineBaggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renly Baratheon in a modern AU when the zombie plague hits. Inspired by the White Walkers rp on tumblr which I am in no way affiliated with</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who You'd Rather Be With

The last text he’d sent Loras read _I hope they don’t cut ur hair again :(_.

He had a habit of opening and closing his phone to check their text log in the vain hope that service would be restored and he’d get a response. Now that they’d lost electricity this was becoming increasingly dangerous. His battery was at less than half life. He really needed to stop. But without thinking, he still found himself staring at the words. Was there any conceivable way that a shallow joke and a frowning emoticon said _You’re the most important person to me. I support you in everything. I just want to be with you for the rest of my life?_

Somehow he thought not.

***

At first, Brienne wouldn’t let him keep watch. He couldn’t really blame her. At the time they thought this situation would blow over and she was the body gaurd after all. His only combat experience was a fencing class and that one time he punched a guy in prep school (he deserved it). He’d never even fired a gun, unless you counted first person shooters. But then the news reports got more serious. And then they stopped broadcasting at all. And Brienne was forced to agree that if she was going to do any gaurding of Renly’s body she would have get _some_ rest.

He’d gotten one practice shot. Just one. They couldn’t spare the bullets. It didn’t help much. He figured his best chance if the infected found them on his watch was to scream for her. But he was damn sure going to try and do more than that if it came to it. He had to live. He wasn’t going to die without seeing Loras again. Or at least trying to.

He didn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t hired her last week. Loras had insisted when he’d told him about the threats. Renly had laughed. Stannis and his wacky religious mistress? They were always threatening him. It didn’t amount to much. But now...now it wasn’t so funny anymore. Nothing was.

***

On the third day he’d found out that she’d met him before. Apparently he’d visited her father’s office during his first internship and had a whole conversation with her. Apparently he’d been very nice. He had no recollection of this event. He almost laughed thinking of it. He’d been _that good_ at charming people. No wonder the threats had been pouring in. If the infection hadn’t happened and shut down nearly everything, he probably would have _actually won the election._

He’d promised Loras that he’d officially come out the day he was elected. Of course, the youth movement liked him precisely because they knew he was gay and that seemed sufficient to prove his counter culture status despite his close associations with all that old money. But the more established players were much more comfortable with Renly if he pretended. Or so he told Loras. _Just for now._ He’d said. And Loras had seemed to understand. He’d even arranged some public dates between Renly and his sister. It worked out for everyone because not only did Margaery love getting her picture taken but she was an excellent dinner companion in her own right.

But then one night he’d said he was enlisting. And Renly thought of all their nights together since they’d first met when Renly was the RA for that freshmen floor and Loras was moving in. He thought of cheering his throat senseless at his soccer games, and coming back to his flat after a long day of smiling at low level politicians while he handed them their coffee, and seedy clubs with pounding music and peach schnapps and red roses on his doorstep and the time Loras had told him he loved him more than life itself and Renly had told him to dial it down a notch and come to bed. He thought of all that and all he could say was “They’re going to cut your hair, aren’t they?” and Loras had asked if that was all Renly cared about and Renly had kissed him on the forehead and told him not to be stupid.

Sometimes he dreamed Loras had come to rescue him. There probably should have been something emasculating about that. Loras as the valiant knight, him as the helpless damsel in the tower. But really, at this point it was their only hope. The army had the reasources to survive this, didn’t they? And Loras had to know where he was. This was his office. It was pretty clear. He had to be coming. Unless he was dead already. Unless he was now one of them.

***

Brienne looked haggard. He wouldn’t have thought he had any guilt left to spare for her, but somehow he did. She kept saying he was important, that she needed to keep him alive because he was a leader and that when things calmed down and decisions needed to be made people would trust him. Renly wasn’t so sure. He was hardly one to suffer from low self esteem, but even if things did take a turn for the better he still thought Brienne’s training in six martial arts and seven kinds of weaponry would be a hell of a lot more useful in the current environment. He tried to tell her so, but she wasn’t having any of it. It got even worse when he tried to apologize.

“There must be somewhere else or someone else you’d rather be with, if you’d known you might die at any second.”

There was a long pause before she said “There’s not.”

And that was that.

***

They were running out of food. The only reason they’d lasted this long was because of the catered event they were supposed to have the day after quarantine was announced. But without electricity the sandwiches had gone bad and everything else was pretty dicey.

She was against it the first time he’d mentioned making a break for it. It was careless. She could protect him best here. The army, disease control, someone would come. But there came a point when she had to start coming around. She said she might be able to find the army base. She wasn’t sure without a GPS. It was better than nothing. It was a chance. And if they made it to base they might have ammo and generators and walky talkys and _maybe just maybe they’d even have Loras or at least they’d know what had happened to him._

They had better go soon, he urged her. They didn’t want the walkers to get the drop on them. At least now they had the element of surprise.

That’s when they heard the crack from the floor below and before he could even wonder there was the smash of what had to be one the boarded up windows. And she tossed him a gun and he didn’t have time to go over how to use it because all he had time to do was stay behind her and hope to every god he could think of that he wouldn’t get bitten.


End file.
